"Up until 1967, Ruscha was the sole author of the images in his books. The year of LeWitt's article [Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Artforum, Summer, 1967] however, he relinquished the camera altogether...Ruscha's move away form original vision and authorship of his photographs was the antithesis of what was going on in the world of fine art photography...His goal was to remove any glimmer of personal style from his pictures. It is ironic that his effort at a styleless treatment has become a style in its own right, emblematic of the 1960s and of conceptualists' use of the camera...
"Records presents photographs of record albums and their covers randomly selected from the artists music collection and meticulously rendered against a blank background. 'I wanted to chop a little piece out of my life and put it in a book."--Sylvia Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography, p. 153 ff.